Glenn Miller Mystery Two Former Raf Members Believe Band Leader Downed Over Channel

December 31, 1985|By Jo Thomas, The New York Times

LONDON — Two members of a Royal Air Force bomber crew in World War II believe they can explain one of the unsolved mysteries of the war: the disappearance of the band leader Glenn Miller. The two say they fear the band leader`s plane was downed over the English Channel by bombs jettisoned from their own plane as they returned from an aborted mission.

The two -- the navigator and pilot -- said their four-engine Lancaster bomber was one of some 150 returning from an aborted mission on Dec. 15, l944 -- the same day Miller took off in bad weather from an airfield near Bedford, England, on a flight to Paris, where he was to give a show. The two RAF crewmen said that after the jettisoned bombs exploded, they saw a Norseman aircraft fall into the sea below them, apparently knocked out of the sky by shock waves. The plane carrying Miller, who was then a major in the Army and leader of the Army Air Force band, was a Norseman D-64.

The official version of the band leader`s disappearance is that his aircraft vanished in the channel fog, perhaps disabled by ice on its wings. Other theories were more bizarre: that he faked his own death, that he was a secret agent, that he died in a Paris brothel with the crash story as a cover- up, or that he was the victim of black marketeers.

The RAF crew`s story was originally raised in public last year by the navigator, Fred Shaw, who now lives in South Africa. His theory, which appeared in South African newspapers, was discounted, however, by members of the Glenn Miller Appreciation Society, a London group with an abiding interest in Miller`s life and music, on the grounds that no RAF planes were assumed to be in the air that day because of the poor weather.

But one member of the society, Alan Ross, of Liverpool, England, investigated Shaw`s claims. Ross wrote to the Defense Ministry and placed an advertisement in the RAF Association Journal, Air Mail, seeking other members of the Lancaster`s crew.

Ross said that members of the appreciation society believed the Defense Ministry had been asked about the matter years ago and that the ministry had replied that ``not even the pigeons were flying that day.`` Defense Ministry officials, however, could not recall such a query.

Records found at the Ministry of Defense by E.A. Munday, of the Air Historical Branch, confirmed that a squadron of Lancasters had, in fact, taken off at noon on Dec. 15, 1944, and had flown on a course over northern France, near the Belgian border, on a mission to attack the railway yards at Siegen, Germany.

``Before entering German controlled airspace, the force was recalled,`` Munday said. ``According to standing orders, the bombs were jettisoned in designated areas before landing.``

The Miller flight took off from Twinwood Farm, near Bedford, 50 miles northwest of London, at 1:55 p.m. Greenwich War Time. The pilot filed no flight plan and his course is unknown. Munday said Monday that, although the band leader was flying to France at the time the RAF squadron was returning from its aborted mission, they could have been miles apart.

Victor Gregory, the pilot of the RAF plane, now living in Weston-super- Mare, England, confirmed Shaw`s story.

``We had a full load of bombs,`` Gregory said Monday. ``We had to jettison them near Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, on the south coast. When we arrived there, the bomb-aimer asked me to open the bomb door, and he dropped the bombs, including a big, 4,000 pound bomb we called a `cookie.` It exploded six or seven feet above the surface of the sea.``